Salesforce: 'Brands must focus on planning, personalization and optimization'

A Q&A with ExactTarget's Kyle Lacy

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TechRadar Pro sat down with Kyle Lacy, Senior Manager of Content Marketing & Research for Salesforce ExactTarget, to discuss the company's new Journey Builder for Apps tool and why he thinks it can simplify the task of the IT department and improve customer service, sales and marketing.

TechRadar Pro:This morning, Salesforce and ExactTarget introduced Journey Builder for Apps. What can Journey Builder clients expect to receive from this addition to the tool?

Kyle Lacy: As Marc [Benioff] said during his keynote: The billion connected devices [in the world] equals a trillion connections. For apps it is about mobilizing every company. Every company is an app, every company is a software company, every company is a digital company. Journey Builder for apps is just one part of that. For example: Stanley Black and Decker has completely mobilized a lot of their hand and power tools. By using Journey Builder, they are able to connect every different channel in one system.

TRP: It's incredibly important that enterprise tech companies capitalize on the Internet of Things. Salesforce in particular has done a good job of taking esoteric concepts and making them sound practical. Why is that important?

KL: The practical part of it is the human behind all of these devices. The Internet of Things breeds an Internet of Customers. We're personalizing a lot of this information. It makes it relevant for all of our brands. When a device is connected to a human being it's about the data shooting back for the brand to become more personalized. When we're using that data effectively we're being seamless [and providing seamless experiences]. Stanley Black and Decker says "Helping is the new selling." When you look at the customer journey, customer service, sales and marketing, they are really all in one.

TRP: How does Journey Builder, and more specifically Journey Builder for Apps, simplify the life of an IT professional that's tasked to work with marketing to build out these kinds of campaign tools?

KL: As Marc said earlier, you can literally run a business from your phone. We're doing business at the speed of light. If you're riding in a car, you have to do your business from your phone. For example: Trunk Club provides me with a stylist, takes information from me and sends me a box of clothes to look good because I can't dress myself [laughs]. I can order a trunk from my phone and my stylist can set up my trunk from her mobile app, all while we're not sitting together in the same room.

TRP: How does Journey Builder help the CRM planning process, which is so crucial to the roots of Salesforce?

KL: The whole idea of Journey Builder is PPO: planning, personalizing and optimizing. As you manage all these customer journeys, whether it's 50 customers or 100 million customers, you can plan, personalize, deliver and optimize via those analytics. The marketing cloud adds to that. A full suite of products that deliver every single experience: email, mobile, social, web. We're the number one CRM platform in the world, we can use that data more effectively to feed that information.

TRP: What's next for Journey Builder? What can we expect from the tool in the future?

KL: Mobile is where our focus will be. Once you have the ability to deliver that seamless experience it's about planning. Whether it's about geo-fencing, email, push personalization, it's about managing that entire process. It's about building out innovation behind that idea.